I am currently adjusting the generator to make the rooms vary in height - both the rooms floor level and variation in ceiling height. This is involving creating steps in the connecting paths and rooms. I am also adding freestanding pillars in larger generated rooms, and need to adjust the lighting to be ray casted to generate the correct shadows.

Then I will be working on the gameplay. I wanted to get the more technical elements out of the way first.

The generator also creates doors, which will separate the rooms. And I have a working pathfinder.

Added some new monsters. Been spendng far to long on the map generator, but now have stairs and varible width corridors. All geomerty is optomisedStarted work on game elements.

All geomerty is calculated, with no prefabs - I want each level to to look as random as possible.My intention is to use height, and light levels (stored in the level array) to affect outcomes of combat.So that standing in the dark higher up than an exposed enemy lower down drawn into the light would be desirable and have noticable inpact on the outcome of combat.

I've got a basic voxel editor that might make it a bit easier to draw your character if you're interested. It'd need some tweaking since I 16x16 it.

Thank you for that kind offer, I'm just using Paint.net. I have seen your pseudo voxel editor that you are using to great effect in you new game. My models rquire 1 pixel per block on a png. Will it do that? Im sure lots of people would love you to post it on and have a go with it. Even better - why dont you build it into the game!

Been refinfing the coridoor generation for rooms that have different height profiles.Added tranclucent selectors that will show the available moves.Added realtime lighting for spellcasting.Added 4 different lighting equations ( they will effect gameplay)

So far so good, do you have a story/concept for the game, be nice to know where its headed.

I have no plot yet(maybe ill experiment with random plots!), but its going to be a turnbased style game, I have a clear Idea that I want it to feellike a board game. Like a warhammer/DnD style game. I will be decorating the maps with torches, chest,water, lava etc to provide context. It will be rouge-like in format.

I remember doing some procedurallly-generated-architecture a few years back, but never entire dungeons, so I'd be interested in how you're going about it.

Hi, the map is generated using binary space partition. A square of given size is recursivly subdivided, creating a binary tree of increasingly smaller divisions.So imagine a square and cutting it into two parts (not down the middle) but into two rectangles. Each rectangle then is subdivided and so on, untill small areas are generated.Then a random size room is placed randomly in that area (tolerances are set). The rooms are given a random height.

Then, the two leafs of each node in the binary tree are rooms that are connected via a coridorr. This is either straight, or a bendy coridor of random width. The distance between the rooms and hight variation is interpolated to give equally spaced steps.

This is a 2d representation (prior to multi-width corridors)

Lights and objects are then placed in the rooms.

There are serval was to generate a random map, one is a maze based algorithm, and also the aproach by Kevin Glass in his Yore games which have great maps.The advantages of the BSP method is that you are garanteed to have every room conected and have controll over that. The disadvantage is that it may be somewhat less random thanother methods. Allowing a clever player to determine the direction of unvisited rooms, though this is less easy in 3d!

What kind of PCs, spell mechanics, skill systems, etc. are you planning to implement?

I plan on having the standard array of charater types, perhapse 4, I imagine things to be quite predestrian in this way. But I would like to precaculate the amount of xp available for each level. And alow the player to miss parts of the map out at there peril. I also want to make all skills, abilities, actions etc to have some random quality. The thing that will hopefully make the game seem involving on a strategic level is the use of height and light level to affect combat outcome.

Hi, the map is generated using binary space partition. A square of given size is recursivly subdivided, creating a binary tree of increasingly smaller divisions... ...The disadvantage is that it may be somewhat less random than other methods. Allowing a clever player to determine the direction of unvisited rooms, though this is less easy in 3d!

I appreciate laying out the technical details like that (on a similar note, props to HGD.) I've been trying to think of ways to efficiently allocate space to AI-generated structures in my own game, so this kind of breakdown on the algorithms involved is very valuable.

I could comment more extensively on the design details, but aside from 'Roguelike', I guess I'd ask what's your model or inspiration here? Thief? Diablo? Tomb Raider? Orcs Must Die? Would this be a single-PC affair, or would companions/hirelings be involved? Is this gritty survival horror, a hack'n'slash power-trip, or something between?

I would tentatively suggest that, if you want player tactics to be primarily about exploiting terrain differences, then it might be best to ensure that the dungeon layout allows enough branches that differing approaches to given enemies are viable. (Relatively safe methods for advance recon would also be needed.) Finally, the ability to modify or circumvent terrain- stockades, traps, stealth, teleports, etc.- would probably be interesting, as would aggro or crowd-control powers or spells to herd, draw or repel enemies around the dungeon, and perhaps regenerating resources like herbs or fountains could be another element to consider.

I should just mention that obliging the player to explore every nook and cranny of the level for XP was one of the principle complaints made against, e.g, velvet assassin, so be careful there.

@morganMy main inspiration would come from board games like space crusade, and the warhammer games...not to say that I play them a lot! Stone soup is interesting. Also more recently legends of yore. Thief is also a great game. But It will probably be similar in style to the excellent Ledgends of Grimrock (without the graphics!) but random! Śingle player tho.

Thank you for your excellent points, I will consider those issues, you have gone into a lot of detail with thouse considerations. Things I had not even considered. Your point about obliging the player to explore everything is very valid, I would have to be carfull with that!

I have also decided when I have finished my current lighting solution ( ray cast shadows/ pillars) I will bee looking at additional generators to create levels with a different feel. Random random generators!

Thank you again for your insight, I will be in a position to address gameplay once I have the lighting/mapping finished.

I only played Space Crusaders once, but me and my siblings went through every mission in the MB Hero Quest game. (Ah, fond memories. ...If I selectively black out all the bickering over who got the chainmail.) I did enjoy the sense of exploration and gritty detail in the line-of-sight/fog-of-war mechanics. (I can't say I''ve played the other Roguelikes you mentioned, but I did play the hell out of blades of exile, which I now realise owed a great deal to the Ultima series.)

I 'd suggest that if you're making it single player, there may not be a particular need for niche protection based on a class system. (And also that single-player doesn't mean single-character.)

But anyway- I'll leave you to focus on lighting/mapping, and if you like, we could discuss skills/spells/classes afterwards?

Sorry, one more point that just occurred to me: If you possibly can, grab a copy of Myth 2- it's a real-time-tactical game that excelled in getting the player to use differences in height and terrain to defeat enemies. (e.g, setting fire to patches of grass, laying fields of explosives, setting fire to grass which then ignites fields of explosives- all with gorgeous physics-simulation of the attendant carnage and mayhem.)

Yeah the physics in myth were impressive for the time, and even now. I remember one time blowing up a Ghol with one dwarf, and watching his sickle fly across the screen, slice a dwarf who was getting set to throw a grenade, who dies, drops all his satchels and a live grenade, and promptly blows himself and the rest of his unit up. Shrapnel could be a real menace sometimes

Looks like strong progress. I like the top-down isometric views in particular, with the sense of ambience coming from the lighting.

Thank you for that, originally It was only going to be first person, but after this comment I have considered the merrits of this and think I will include a 3rd person view. I could do more with that with regards to being able to select squares for movment that you couldnt see in 1st person. Also It would be more like a board game... so thanks for that.

I am using a fixed pipline, no shaders. All lighting is pre-calculated. At the moment it uses simlple raycasting, but I might increase the resolution of this. The main idea for this is I wanted to use lots of lights, with shadows.

Looking over that reddit thread, the algorithm sounds quite interesting, and I'd like to see some efficient implementations of delaunay triangulation/minimal spanning trees (seeing I've never done it myself. Hell, I hadn't even heard of the former before.)

I guess I'd just say that guaranteeing and identifying loops in the room network would be especially useful, if you want to allow multiple approaches for dealing with a given mob of monsters. Looks cool in any case.

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